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“Mayor Looked
By BRUCE BIOSSAT
ATLANTA, Sept. 20—Despite
sudden attack upon him by
some white liberals, Mayor Ivan
Allen of Atlanta seems sure to
emerge from his city’s post-
Labor Day racial disturbances a
yipnger figure than ever.
-tesponsible Negro leaders
and sympathetic white
spokesmen here simply do not
‘buy any argument that the
‘incidents demonstrate that the
‘Mayor's internationally
celebrated assault upon Negro
ponditions is fundamentally
insincere.
Influential Negroes and whites
specifics of
hhis attitudes or his courage.
Most impressive to these
people was his risky mingling
with young hotheads stirred up
in - eee. 6 outbreak in
ws, 9720/66
For an hour and a half, Mr,
Allen plunged from one angry
knot of rock-throwing Negroes
to another, trying to calm them
down and avert stern police
action. He told this reporter in
an interview:
“Sometimes when I'd be
talking to one group, another
would be jumping a policeman
just behind my back.”
Most of the aroused Negroes
did not know who he was. Some,
he found, did not know WHAT
a mayor was. While he milled
around, some policemen
helplessly muttered fears for his
safety.
An experienced Negro civil
rights leader in Atlanta says
privately:
“Tt was very significant that
Mayor Allen saw the trouble
first-hand, that he experienced
the anger and didn't just read
about it in police reports. He
went out there when his very
presenca could hava been
provocative,
“Tt is good to know we have
a man who cares enough lo go
in and see."
A white liberal, looking at the
mayor from a longer view, says
his determination to rid Atlanta
of slums is ‘almost an
obsession” with him, This
sourea thinks, in fact, that
others in the city’s white power
structure are sometimes
annoyed at the mayor's
preoccupation with this and
other Negro problems.
‘Some of the very same Negro
and white spokesmen who speak
feelingly of Mayor Allen's
dedication and courage believe
he has not really grasped the
depths of slum despair and
frustration, that he moves too
slowly and too narrowly to
eradicate festering conditions
which could be growing worse.
Not all the blame. for this is
Good in Atlanta Racial Crisis.
laid at his door. Negro leaders.
often criticize themselves and
their middle class colleagues for
not showing more forceful and
imaginative leadership.
There was criticism of the
mayor, however, for arresting
SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael
and other “SNICK” workers on
charges of “inciting a riot.’ It
was argued that responsible Ne-
groes in the disturbance areas
were effectively casting out |
Carmichael and his limited —
followers on their own.
Tho experienced Negro
leaders vehemently disapproved —
of Carmichael’s tactics, a
prominent lawyer among them
said privately that one group he
sat in. with suggested quietly
that the stir “might do us a
whole lot of good.”
The argument is the obvious
one: there has-been too much
attention bo Atlanta's shining
surface, too little to its seamy
underside,
By BRUCE BIOSSAT
ATLANTA, Sept. 20—Despite
sudden attack upon him by
some white liberals, Mayor Ivan
Allen of Atlanta seems sure to
emerge from his city’s post-
Labor Day racial disturbances a
yipnger figure than ever.
-tesponsible Negro leaders
and sympathetic white
spokesmen here simply do not
‘buy any argument that the
‘incidents demonstrate that the
‘Mayor's internationally
celebrated assault upon Negro
ponditions is fundamentally
insincere.
Influential Negroes and whites
specifics of
hhis attitudes or his courage.
Most impressive to these
people was his risky mingling
with young hotheads stirred up
in - eee. 6 outbreak in
ws, 9720/66
For an hour and a half, Mr,
Allen plunged from one angry
knot of rock-throwing Negroes
to another, trying to calm them
down and avert stern police
action. He told this reporter in
an interview:
“Sometimes when I'd be
talking to one group, another
would be jumping a policeman
just behind my back.”
Most of the aroused Negroes
did not know who he was. Some,
he found, did not know WHAT
a mayor was. While he milled
around, some policemen
helplessly muttered fears for his
safety.
An experienced Negro civil
rights leader in Atlanta says
privately:
“Tt was very significant that
Mayor Allen saw the trouble
first-hand, that he experienced
the anger and didn't just read
about it in police reports. He
went out there when his very
presenca could hava been
provocative,
“Tt is good to know we have
a man who cares enough lo go
in and see."
A white liberal, looking at the
mayor from a longer view, says
his determination to rid Atlanta
of slums is ‘almost an
obsession” with him, This
sourea thinks, in fact, that
others in the city’s white power
structure are sometimes
annoyed at the mayor's
preoccupation with this and
other Negro problems.
‘Some of the very same Negro
and white spokesmen who speak
feelingly of Mayor Allen's
dedication and courage believe
he has not really grasped the
depths of slum despair and
frustration, that he moves too
slowly and too narrowly to
eradicate festering conditions
which could be growing worse.
Not all the blame. for this is
Good in Atlanta Racial Crisis.
laid at his door. Negro leaders.
often criticize themselves and
their middle class colleagues for
not showing more forceful and
imaginative leadership.
There was criticism of the
mayor, however, for arresting
SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael
and other “SNICK” workers on
charges of “inciting a riot.’ It
was argued that responsible Ne-
groes in the disturbance areas
were effectively casting out |
Carmichael and his limited —
followers on their own.
Tho experienced Negro
leaders vehemently disapproved —
of Carmichael’s tactics, a
prominent lawyer among them
said privately that one group he
sat in. with suggested quietly
that the stir “might do us a
whole lot of good.”
The argument is the obvious
one: there has-been too much
attention bo Atlanta's shining
surface, too little to its seamy
underside,